Food Prices Now Higher Than 2007-08 Levels

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, global food prices have increased dramatically over the past 12 months.

The FAO has something called the FAO Food Price Index, which, according to their site, "is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities" and "consists of the average of 6 commodity group price indices" including meat, dairy, cereals, oils+fats and sugar. According to the FAO, "55 commodity quotations considered by FAO commodity specialists as representing the international prices of the food commodities noted are included in the overall index".

According to the FAO, the Food Price Index traded at 90 in 2000. Let's look at the data from 2000-2009: